Kochi: After the garbage menace, the Kochi Corporation has now taken up with the railways the issue of trains dumping human wastes openly onto the tracks and their subsequent seeping into canals and public places. It wants the railways to set up a sewage treatment plant at the South railway station premises on a war-footing. Mayor Soumini Jain raised the issue with top divisional authorities during a recent high level meet in which the railways promised to look into the sewage treatment plant plan that might cost it over Rs 10 crore.
“Most train rakes, except for a few new ones, still have a primitive way of dumping human wastes – directly onto the tracks. The area near the South railway station is below sea level which means water logging is frequent. We have got complaints from local residents of human wastes seeping into public areas and corporation canals. The issue is especially grave at the Eastern entrance of Karshaka Road and it is causing health issues even to people there,” Jain told DC.
“The rakes should either be fitted with collection tanks or they should set up a sewage treatment plant in the station premises. We have no problem with treated water flowing into corporation canals,” she said. When contacted, a senior railway official said the divisional authorities have initiated an exercise to convert half the toilets in all long haul trains into bio-toilets. “As of now, a total of 279 coaches in the division feature the facility (half bio-toilets) besides the two ‘Green’ trains -- the Ernakulam-Okha Express (T No 16338) and the Kochuveli-Bangalore (T No 16316) Express,” he said.
The development comes a few months after the railways and the Corporation locked horns over disposing of truckloads of wastes generated daily from long-distance trains terminating at Ernakulam Junction. For years together, the railways was dumping nearly 20 tonnes of wastes on a daily basis at its land at Ponnurunni. Kochi Corporation had refused to dispose of the wastes citing absence of an agreement. The contractor employed by the railways used to burn the garbage or simply dump them in open spaces, evoking protests from the local populace over resultant health hazards.
